Optic flow in the natural habitats of zebrafish supports spatial biases in visual self-motion estimation.
Curr Biol
; 32(23): 5008-5021.e8, 2022 12 05.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36327979
ABSTRACT
Animals benefit from knowing if and how they are moving. Across the animal kingdom, sensory information in the form of optic flow over the visual field is used to estimate self-motion. However, different species exhibit strong spatial biases in how they use optic flow. Here, we show computationally that noisy natural environments favor visual systems that extract spatially biased samples of optic flow when estimating self-motion. The performance associated with these biases, however, depends on interactions between the environment and the animal's brain and behavior. Using the larval zebrafish as a model, we recorded natural optic flow associated with swimming trajectories in the animal's habitat with an omnidirectional camera mounted on a mechanical arm. An analysis of these flow fields suggests that lateral regions of the lower visual field are most informative about swimming speed. This pattern is consistent with the recent findings that zebrafish optomotor responses are preferentially driven by optic flow in the lateral lower visual field, which we extend with behavioral results from a high-resolution spherical arena. Spatial biases in optic-flow sampling are likely pervasive because they are an effective strategy for determining self-motion in noisy natural environments.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Optic Flow
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Animals
Language:
En
Journal:
Curr Biol
Journal subject:
BIOLOGIA
Year:
2022
Document type:
Article